Skip to content

On The Bleeding Edge

On The Bleeding Edge

Gone are the days when sound reinforcement for house of worship applications meant a few podium-mounted mics, a wireless lav and an automated mixer. Church installs have grown to the level where they incorporate high-ticket digital desks, full band and choir miking and multiple monitor mixes routed from a dedicated monitor desk — often embarrassing club, theatre and even touring systems. Many churches have started the practice of making audio and video recordings of their services in an effort to preserve their message while simultaneously finding a new stream of revenue.

Read More »

Regional Slants

Do you go to church? How about a synagogue, Buddhist temple or mosque? Well, if you are in the business of mixing or installing live sound you should be at a house of worship regularly. Let me clarify myself. I am not suggesting that we in the live sound biz are bigger sinners than the rest of the population, I just want to make the point that if you are not involved in church sound at some level you are missing out on a potentially enormous income stream. Don't believe me? Are you sure you read the rest of this magazine?

Read More »

Bach Behind the Board

Why in Heaven's name would anyone want to spend huge amounts of weekly tithing to install a State of the Art (SOTA) sound system into a house of worship? Better yet, why on earth would any house of worship deem it necessary to get into the sound reinforcement/concert business? Is it all just pomp and circumstance, a vanity stemmed from coveting a neighboring congregation's techno wizardry, or is there a higher purpose?

Read More »

Lakewood Church

For anyone who thinks a church sound department means a Mackie mixer with two knobs missing, four pockmarked SM58s, two Samson wireless mics and a 17- year-old volunteer, Lakewood Church in Houston may be something of a revelation.

Supporting the theory that everything's bigger in Texas, Lakewood is a 16,000 seat arena-sized facility whose list of gear, musicians and crew reads like an attempt at a Guinness Book entry: 11 piece band, 200- voice choir, four Nuendo rigs recording 135 tracks of audio, four Euphonix consoles and five full-time sound crew professionals, all under the supervision of one Reed Hall, director of audio and technical production.

Read More »

Taking the Choir Out of the Tabernacle

What room is so large that a 350- voice choir: is so far from the podium they can't hear the conductor; is 45 feet back and 12 feet above the orchestra; can't hear the orchestra (and vice versa); sings directly in front of a pipe organ whose ranks and pipes can overpower a room with seating for 21,000?

If you said the Conference Center of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints then you are correct!

Read More »

A Little Song, A Little Dance. . .

For one corporate pharmaceutical gig I worked the company decided to create lifesized mascots of their biggest sellers, medicinal "pen" injectors. If you've never seen one of these they do look somewhat like a pen. They're a brightly colored plastic tube about eight-inches in length, about as thick as an Italian sausage, gently rounded at the tip, where there's a small hole where the injection comes out of. It is no stretch to say they look decidedly, um, anatomical. The biopharm company hired four actors to wear the costumes and lip-sync to songs between sessions, the songs consisting of lyrics about the company's products set to classic rock tunes.

Read More »

Summer Vacation

To be honest, when FOH called me needing someone to cover Ozzfest I was pretty stoked. I had always wanted to see Ozzfest, but in this biz doing a few shows a week of my own, I have generally no desire to be around another show. I also had never been asked to "cover a show". Typically FOH just wants me to "rant"–which I'm OK with.

This time, though, it was coverage, so my wife Lisa and I drove from Vegas to San Diego Saturday for a Sunday show. We had arrangements with Ken "Pooch" Van Druten, FOH engineer for System of a Down, to get working passes for the day. When we arrived around 2 p.m., Pooch met us at the gate and took us to his bus where we had a 30-minute discussion with him and Dave Coil, monitor mixer for System of a Down.

Read More »

Hear Technologies Mix Back and Hear Back Combo System

Hear Technologies Mix Back and Hear Back Combo System

By Bill Evans and Jamie Rio

Monitor World has changed. Blame it on the increasing use of personal monitors and higher expectations on the part of performers, but the bottom line is that three or four mono mixes and a couple of sidefills will most likely not do the trick on most gigs. Especially in venues–like churches–where a small footprint is needed and where you need to squeeze maximum flexibility from a crew with often limited technical know-how. We have found a solution that works well for us. At a trade show in 2003, we went introduced to an affordable, easy to use and flexible system called the Hear Back from a company called Hear Technologies.

Read More »

Teaching Mic Technique

As self-proclaimed audio experts, it is our duty to learn the ins and outs of how microphone elements work, and how best to use them. Even though we are not Diva or Mister Ego vocalists, we should know how to work the mics. This is especially the case in house of worship (HOW) situations where most of the speakers and singers are not professionals. So let's get on with teaching the teachers.

The Mic Fits The Task

Read More »

Welcome to the Jungle

John Shivers is one of the busiest soundmen on Broadway, even though he's not frequently there. He was associate sound designer for Aida, The Producers, and Hairspray, the sound designer for 700 Sundays, In My Life, and the new Tarzan, and also productions of The Producers, Hairspray, and The Lion King around the country and across the globe. In fact, when he chatted with FOH recently about Tarzan, the newest Disney production to hit the Great White Way, he was getting ready to go to Shanghai to relocate the Australian production of The Lion King, then check on that same show in Hamburg and London, perform a preliminary survey for a Tarzan production in Holland, then fi nally do preliminary associate design work/research on Mary Poppins by visiting the running London production before opening it in New York later this year with sound designer Steve Kennedy.

Read More »

Give God Great Sound – He Can Afford It

Don't think of it as church. Instead, think of it as a media center with the ultimate, eternal, all-access laminate. Any sarcasm here is tempered by a very serious reality: houses of worship have become big business in the U.S. and increasingly around the world. The American Christian fundamentalist movement has been the prime force behind the trend, the epitome of which are mega-churches, such as the now-famous tabernacle of Joel Osteen and his evangelical and highly telegenic family, who broadcast weekly from what used to be the Houston Rockets arena in Houston, where they fill the seats more consistently than most NBA teams can. (See the FOH Interview with Lakewood audio chief Reed Hall)

Read More »

Brent Milton and Shane Presley

Brent Milton

Owner

Pacific West Sound

Bakersfield, CA

[email protected]

www.pacificwestsound.com

Services Provided: Professional custom sound/video design and installation; complete concert sound reinforcement/regional touring; backline rental and audio training.

Clients: Production: Aly & AJ, Kansas (racks & stacks), David Sanborne, Salvador, James Brown, NeedToBreathe, Overflow, Latin Kings of Comedy tour (3 dates), Los Kumbia Kings, Motown Tribute Show, B.B. King (2 dates), Black Crowes, Herman's Hermits, Avalia Beach Blues Fest, Tattoo Fest, SeaBreeze Music Fest.

Read More »